While the tweet might be public, the meaning of such a code would
be lost on the average person without information on how to
decode the data, according to an unnamed source with knowledge of
the activity. In the hands of a Republican committee member,
though, that tweet could be used to relay information to a
third-party about the US House race in California’s 40th
congressional district.

If true, that would allow Republicans to communicate with allied
Super PACs, giving them information that could help determine
where to spend money on their advertising campaign.

Super PACs – which evolved after the Supreme Court ruling in 2010
Citizens Union v. Federal Elections Commission – are allowed to
raise unlimited sums from corporations, unions, associations, and
individuals, and spend the money overtly on advertising for and
against a candidate. Unlike political action committees, which
can contribute small amounts of money to a candidate’s committee,
super PAC’s cannot donate directly to a political candidate or be
involved with the candidate’s committee.

Tweeting such information, then, would seem illegal – but
election experts are not so sure.

“It’s a line that has not been defined. This is really on the
cutting edge,” Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel at the Campaign
Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization focused on campaign
finance issues, told CNN. “It might not be legal. It’s a
cutting edge practice that, to my knowledge, the Federal Election
Commission has never before addressed to explicitly determine its
legality or permissibility.”

The anonymous source told CNN the tweets he or she captured in
screenshots stretched back to July, but the groups have
communicated in this manner for four years. Staffers for each
group deleted individual tweets every few months, so only the
past few months of data were available when CNN first viewed the
Twitter accounts. The network’s Chris Moody argued these
techniques were designed to skirt election laws.

He found out that two outside groups and a Republican campaign
committee had access to the information posted to the accounts.
They include American Crossroads, the super PAC founded by Karl
Rove, the American Action Network, a nonprofit advocacy group,
and the NRCC, which is the campaign arm for the House GOP.

And just minutes after Moody asked the NRCC about the scheme, the
Twitter accounts were deleted.

“If it truly requires some sort of Ovaltine decoder ring to
make heads or tails of the information, then there certainly is
the possibility that there was some pre-arrangement,”
Kenneth Gross, a former head of the FEC enforcement division who
now advises Democrats and Republicans on campaign finance issues,
told CNN. “Just making it public is not enough. You have to
further meet the requirement of no pre-arrangement or
coordination. But it is the burden of the government to
demonstrate that.”